Centaurea - Crinum

Centaurea atropurpurea £3.25 / £4.50
A fine tall plant with excellent silver grey foliage when grown dry and lean. Wine red knobby flower heads. 150cm. Previously listed by us, and everyone else who grew it, as benoistii.

Centaurea cheiranthifolia £3.25 / £4.50
Lovely large palest yellow cornflowers. Grey-green leaves. 40cm.

Centaurea fischeri £3.25 / £4.50
Rather similar, with pale pink flowers.

Centaurea kotschyana £3 / £3.50
Low growing, with rather shiny green leaves, and purple thimbly flower heads: yellow stamens contrast beautifully.

Centaurea montana 'Gold Bullion' £3.25 / £3.75
A cheery bright golden leaved form of the common perennial cornflower, with the usual big blue flower heads. Give it full sun for best leaf colour, and well drained soil.

Centaurea montana 'Joyce' £3.25 / £4.50
The usual greyish foliage, but with flowers of a clear pink (not pale as in carnea).

Centaurea montana 'Lady Flora Hastings' £3.25 / £4.50
As above, but nice spidery white flowers with contrasting dark stamens.

Centaurea montana 'Ochroleuca' £3.25 / £4.50
An interesting pale yellow flowered form, later flowering than most. I could beleive it is a hybrid with cheiranthifolia.

Centaurea montana 'Purpurea' £3.25 / £4.50
As above, with unambiguously purple flowers.

Centaurea nogmovii £3.25 / £4.50
Light purple cornflowers over good divided foliage, very silvery when young. An experimental perennial for those who like funny names.

Centaurea uniflora £3 / £4
Solitary purple-pink flowers over glossy green prickly leaves. 40cm.

Centaurea Totnes Fat Lemon' £3.50 / £5
Fat knobbly yellow flower heads on a rather stocky plant, about 50cm tall. Greyish green leaves. It's a selection from our controlled cross, benoistii of gardens x orientalis. While orientalis is a well known plant, we find it small flowered, unhappy in our wet climate, and a bit rangy. This does the same job much better, we feel.

Centaurea simplicicaulis £3 / £3.50
Finely pinnate leaves, clumping up nicely, with attractive purple pink flower heads on thin, wiry 30cm stems. For the rock garden or border front in sun.

Centaurea triumfettii 'Hoar Frost' £3.25 / £4.50
Good sized white flowers with pink-purple tinted centres in May. Grey leaves. 30cm, strongly summer dormant. A Monksilver selection from their own Turkish collection. A great plant for a sunny, well drained place.

Centaurea triumfetii x montana £3.25 / £4.50
A lucky mistake meant that we've grown one of Joe Sharman's experimental hybrids for some years, and have come to regard it very highly. Blue montana-like flowers at the tops of unbranched stems to 75cm, with a more open, running habit than montana, but still tough in the garden. Thanks, Joe!

Chasmanthe floribunda 'Saturnes' £3.25 / £4.50
These almost frost tender winter growing irids have exotic swept-back flowers in early spring, over crocosmia-like fans of leaves, and they need a dry summer dormancy - good for a well drained place in the mildest gardens or a pot under glass. This year's example has yellow flowers, with indigo stained shoot bases.

Chloranthus fortunei £3.25 / £3.75
A whorl of four leaves, purple/brown tinted when young, on each 30cm stem, and little white flowers in May. A hardy clumper for woodland conditions.
Very peculiar, very attractive.

Chondropetalum tectorum £4.50
And now for something completely different, a restio. In Europe we have grasses, sedges and rushes; in southern Africa  the family Restionaceae should be added to the list. This example makes a dense clump of whippy green stems to 1.2m, attractively brown scaled, with little brown rushy flower clusters at the top. Hardy in milder gardens on acidic soil, it should not get too dry. Two species have until recently been confused under this name. The larger one, more common in gardens, has now been renamed.

Chrysosplenium macrophyllum  £4
The golden saxifrage that thinks it's a Bergenia. Round bristly leaves, new rosettes forming at the ends of obscene fat hairy stolons. Flowers quite large but uninteresting compared with the foliage. Mad ground cover for a woodsy bed.

Cimicifuga see Actaea - the names have been changed to protect the innocent…

Cirsium 'Mount Etna' £3 / £4
An odd little plant, only 60cm tall with narrow flower heads, white with projecting violet stamens. Not unlike C. oleraceum, but without the lush decurrent stem leaves. Seems to be getting around the nursery trade, but frankly I think the next two are infinitely better.

Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum' £3.25 / £4.50
The classic crimson-purple flowered species for the border. 1.2m.

Cirsium sp. £3 / £4
This is an imposing counterpart in pure white, with good sized flower heads in August. Rather taller (1.5m or more). Unidentified, from Roger & Sue Norman. I have never seen this fine plant anywhere else. I've been told that it is Serratula bulgarica, but I'm not sure I agree.

Convallaria majalis var. rosea £3.25 / £3.75
Lily of the Valley is one of those infuriating plants that likes some people/gardens and not others, for no discernible reason. This is the pink form…

Convallaria majalis 'Vic Pawlowski's Gold' £3.75 / £5 FROM SPRING 09
...and this has particularly good yellow stripes to the leaves; we've never seen a reversion.

Coptis japonica var. major £3.25 / £3.75
From the backwaters of the Ranunculaceae comes this small Northern genus for cool, humusy positions. Finely divided, but rather stiff, ternate leaves to 25cm, and tiny white flowers in autumn, as the leaves go down, with extraordinary whorls of seed pods with the new leaves in spring. Gently running. Very rarely seen.

Corydalis leucanthema DJHC 752 £3.25 / £3.75
A fibrous rooted species for shade. Rather substantial leaves, grey and somewhat marbled in silver. Pink-and-white flowers in spring. 15cm.

Corydalis 'Kingfisher' £3.25 / £3.75
Much more compact and less running than the next two,  it is a really lovely sky blue in flower; cashmeriana x flexuosa.

Corydalis 'Spinners' £3 / £3.50
There are many flexuosa/elata hybrids around now. We still consider this and the next to be the finest. 'Spinners' is close to elata in appearance with scented indigo blue flowers, but bulks up more densely and generously, as with flexuosa.

Corydalis 'Tory MP' £3 / £3.50
This one is more obviously intermediate. It's tall (to 75cm), forming a vigorous, dense, spreading clump, with intense blue flowers and red tinted stems. It flowers for an unusually long time in late spring and summer, then may repeat in autumn after a summer recess. It grows well in full sun as well as partial shade.

Crinum campanulatum £4 / £6
This less familiar species has lots of very narrow leaves from a large bulb. A wet lover, it's probably best in a big pot stood in a saucer of water from spring to autumn, in a warm sunny spot. Heads of red-pink flowers.

Crinum 'Ellen Bosanquet' £5 / £6
An old hybrid, with spreading leaves and little neck to the bulb. Flowers a warm colour at the red end of pink. Once large and deep, the massive bulbs are hardy.

Crinum 'Hanibal's Dwarf' £4 / £6
Compact plant, around 50cm. Pink flowers with a rather starry effect.

Crinum moorei £5 / £6
Palest pink, well formed flowers on 1.5m stems. Perfectly hardy in the mildest gardens, such as Coleton Fishacre where it is one of the glories of late summer. Give it a warm, sheltered site or pot elsewhere.

Crinum x powellii AGM £4 / £5
Tough and hardy. Luxuriant foliage, and bright pink flowers to 1.2m in summer.

Crinum x powellii 'Album' AGM £4 / £5
Clean white flowers, of slightly better form. Divisions of our own stock which really does have white flowers, unlike some you find in the bulb trade.